Voicemail systems exist for receiving, storing, and providing voicemail messages for subscribers of the voicemail system. A “subscriber” is a person that has actively subscribed to the voicemail system by creating either (1) a voice mailbox and/or (2) a billing relationship with the provider where the subscriber agrees to pay money, either directly or indirectly through the purchase of other services, for use of the voicemail system.
It will be appreciated that situations exist when a subscriber's voicemail system is unavailable. For example, the voicemail system may have experienced a power outage or some other event that has caused the voicemail system to go “off-line.” In such instances, callers may not be able to leave a voicemail message for the subscriber, causing the subscriber to miss the call and resulting in poor customer satisfaction.
Moreover, in order for the subscriber to retrieve voicemail messages from the voicemail system, the subscriber typically is required to provide his/her telephone number and authentication information. When the subscriber is accessing his/her voicemail account from a home or personal telephone, the requirement for the subscriber to provide authentication information each time the subscriber accesses the voicemail account can be burdensome.